A plague on both their houses

Mercutio says this to Romeo as he gives a frustrated curse on the Montagues and Capulets because of his confusion over their hatred and feuding one to  another.  I am feeling some of the same frustration as I and most serious financial observers saw this well telegraphed action of a downgrade of US debt by Standard and Poors more than two weeks ago.  S&P, the rating agency that totally blew the ratings of financial companies and their mortgage products that greatly contributed to the “Great financial recession” of ’07-’09, is now trying to get ahead of the game by downgrading US debt from AAA to AA+.  This is the first such downgrade of US debt in the history of this great nation and is being hysterically fought back by the White house to no avail.  The ramifications of this are not completely known because it is a first,  the futures markets are down about 2.5% or 270 points down on the Dow Jones average on Sunday night.  This is off the lows but leaves a stock market that is very oversold and a treasury bond and gold market that are equally overbought.  All of this volatility causes small investors to flee and hunker down, exactly what this consumer driven economy does not need.  If this ratings downgrade was as well telegraphed as I am saying it is, how can the politicians in both houses and the president have acted with such obvious lack of concern for policy and public good and instead acted out political desire to hurt the other side.  Don’t’ get me wrong, I am a free market conservative independent thinker who leans to the right and believes the GOP had the better side of this argument, but also control only ½ of 1/3 of the government.  I didn’t like the debt ceiling deal because S&P said they were going to downgrade if $4 Trillion was not cut from the US debt load over the next 10 years and are now just fulfilling their obligation to follow through on a promise to do just this; why was the GOP not out saying this was the ramification of not cutting more.  The president plans on blaming the House GOP reps and may succeed, but who cares now, the American public is going to have to deal with higher interest rates on credit cards, mortgages, student loans etc.  This says nothing of the $14.3 trillion of debt we have and China has already signaled that the US needs to get its act together now, this is code for we want more interest on the US debt we buy and they will get it.  Monday morning will really tell how the world deals with this watershed event